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Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin
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What's this?

Revisiting the Stanford Prison Experiment: Could Participant Self-Selection Have Led to the Cruelty?

Thomas Carnahan

Western Kentucky University

Sam McFarland

Western Kentucky University, sam.mcfarland{at}wku.edu

The authors investigated whether students who selectively volunteer for a study of prison life possess dispositions associated with behaving abusively. Students were recruited for a psychological study of prison life using a virtually identical newspaper ad as used in the Stanford Prison Experiment (SPE; Haney, Banks & Zimbardo, 1973) or for a psychological study, an identical ad minus the words of prison life. Volunteers for the prison study scored significantly higher on measures of the abuse-related dispositions of aggressiveness, authoritarianism, Machiavellianism, narcissism, and social dominance and lower on empathy and altruism, two qualities inversely related to aggressive abuse. Although implications for the SPE remain a matter of conjecture, an interpretation in terms of person-situation interactionism rather than a strict situationist account is indicated by these findings. Implications for interpreting the abusiveness of American military guards at Abu Ghraib Prison also are discussed.

Key Words: prison • aggression • Machiavellianism • authoritarianism • narcissism

This version was published on May 1, 2007

Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Vol. 33, No. 5, 603-614 (2007)
DOI: 10.1177/0146167206292689
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This article has been cited by other articles:


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 Pers Soc Psychol BullHome page
S. McFarland and T. Carnahan
A Situation's First Powers Are Attracting Volunteers and Selecting Participants: A Reply to Haney and Zimbardo (2009)
Pers Soc Psychol Bull, June 1, 2009; 35(6): 815 - 818.
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 Pers Soc Psychol BullHome page
C. Haney and P. G. Zimbardo
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Pers Soc Psychol Bull, June 1, 2009; 35(6): 807 - 814.
[Abstract] [PDF]